The Case of the Waltzing Mouse by by George Wyatt (Charles Spain Verral), 1961.
The Crestwood Garden Club holds an animal show to raise money for their Community Camp Fund. Brains and Jimmy enjoy seeing all of Professor Gustave’s animals, but they become concerned when a seal knocks over a creel where its fish are stored, and they see that there is a large amount of cash concealed inside. Professor Gustave says that he carries that much cash with him because he is always traveling from town to town with his animal show and can’t depend on a single bank for his money.
Brains still seems concerned about the money and the way it’s concealed, but Jimmy is hoping that Brains won’t find a mystery that will disrupt their vacation plans. Every year, they spend a few weeks at a lakeside cabin that their families rent, and all Jimmy wants to do is go swimming and fishing.
However, while Jimmy’s older sister, Ann, is driving the boys to the cabin, they come upon the professor’s trailer of animals. The animals are very upset, and the professor is nowhere to be seen. After searching the area, they find the professor, and he tells them that he was attacked by a couple of men. One of them is a guy called Blackie, who used to work for the professor, but the professor fired him because he mistreated the animals. The men were trying to take the creel with the money in it, but the professor threw it into the bushes, and they didn’t find it.
It turns out that the professor is also going to be staying at a cabin by the lake for awhile. They help him to get settled there with his animals, but Brains is still concerned that the men will be back for the professor’s money. The concern is justified because the men later attack the professor while he’s in a boat on the lake, and the creel is lost overboard. The professor is very upset, not just because the money is now at the bottom of the lake but because the money actually doesn’t belong to him. The professor says that it really belongs to someone else, although he doesn’t say who.
Brains realizes that they can get the creel back because a policeman friend of theirs is also staying at the lake and has offered to teach the boys how to skin dive. Jimmy has wanted to learn to dive and is willing to dive for the creel. Unfortunately, the situation is complicated when the men kidnap the professor for ransom, saying that they’ll let him go if the boys bring them the money.
My Reaction
There were parts of this book that I didn’t really care for. I’ve noticed that the Brains Benton books sometimes include stereotypical attitudes of boys looking down on girls or discounting their abilities. Near the beginning of the book, Jimmy’s sister Ann is trying to get the boys to hurry getting ready to go to the cabin, but Brains wants some extra time to take care of a new device that he’s just gotten. Jimmy says, “But, after all, she is a girl, and girls and women just don’t understand how it is when a fellow gets interested in something highly scientific and technical.” No, Jimmy, I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s not about not understanding how someone can find science interesting; Ann’s just in a hurry to get going. She would probably be just an impatient if you were taking extra time to pick out a different shirt or get your hair combed just right. Granted, some of Jimmy’s comments are tongue-in-cheek. When Ann later tells them to stay out of trouble because she knows that they’ve gotten into trouble with their detective business before, Jimmy mentally lists the dangerous situations they’ve been in while denying that they were really that bad. “Women! Always exaggerating!”
The mystery wasn’t too bad. We do know who the villain is from the beginning, so like the other books that I’ve read in this series, it’s more of a “howdunit” than a “whodunit.” Readers get to watch Brains and Jimmy figure out how to rescue the professor and save his money. There is one other element of the story that is more of a mystery than the professor’s kidnapping. The professor says that the money isn’t really his, and the boys see a mysterious girl talking to Blackie. Is she the one who really owns the money, and if so, what is the relationship between her and the professor?
The Case of the Roving Rolls by George Wyatt (Charles Spain Verral), 1961.
Summer has been dull, with no mysteries to solve. Jimmy doesn’t mind too much because he has other things to do, but his friend and partner in their detective agency, “Brains” Benton, is going a little stir-crazy. When they started their detective agency, they named it the Benton and Carson International Detective Agency, but so far, they’ve only solved local cases. Brains wants to find an international case to solve to justify the name. The opportunity comes when Jimmy gets a letter from his Uncle Ed, who has been living overseas.
Uncle Ed is a pilot who has been living in a fictional Middle-Eastern country called Kassabeba. In his letter, he mentions that something strange has been happening there recently, although he finds it hard to explain exactly what’s been happening. He says that, soon, the answer may be coming to the boys’ town of Crestwood, if it’s not there already. The Emir who ruled the country died under somewhat suspicious circumstances, and his half brother took over from him, but the Emir also had a son who was attending Eton at the time his father died. Apparently, the Emir’s half brother has been doing everything he can to prevent this young prince from coming home to challenge his rule of their country. Uncle Ed and some others who were friendly with the former Emir and like his son, Prince Halam, have been trying to help him, although it’s not going very well. The half brother hasn’t been coronated as the new Emir yet, but the prince’s supporters doubt they can get the prince back home before that happens in another month. Instead, they’ve decided to send the prince to Crestwood College, where Brains’s parents are teachers, seeing it as a quieter, safer place for him to finish his education. The prince’s supporters are hoping that he’ll have another chance at ruling his country when his education is complete. Unfortunately, Uncle Ed has just received word that the half brother has sent a couple of his associates to the US. It’s possible that he’s discovered where the prince is going, and his associates may be heading to Crestwood to harm the prince. Uncle Ed describes these two associates – Jujab, who is short and round with a moon-shaped face, and “the Duke”, who is tall and lanky with a horse face and claims to be British.
The prospect of helping to protect a prince from another country is exciting, and Brains has a thought about the first thing they should do. He says that, if people are coming to Crestwood from another country, probably one of the first things they would do is try to connect with someone else from their own country who is already living in Crestwood because they could use some help and support. Crestwood isn’t a big city, and there is only one other person from Kassabeba already living there, a man named Khouri who works as a cook for a wealthy woman in town. Jimmy is afraid of the cook because he’s a temperamental man, and he had a bad run-in with him at Mrs. Willoughby’s mansion. Jimmy’s been doing a little work there because Mrs. Willoughby hired him to make some shelves for a gardening show, and the cook flew into a rage at him for coming into the kitchen. However, Brains thinks it’s important that they find out if Jujab and the Duke have been to see the cook.
When Jimmy is on his way to the Willoughby estate to meet Brains there after his paper route, he is almost hit by Mrs. Willoughby’s Rolls-Royce … but there’s nobody driving it! Yet, somebody must be controlling it somehow because the car deliberately swerved toward Jimmy and then made a turn in the road. Just after the Rolls-Royce almost hits Jimmy, Mrs. Willoughby’s British butler and chauffeur, Frothingham, comes along on a bicycle, in pursuit of the car. He falls off the bike, and Jimmy helps him. Frothingham explains that he’s got to catch up to the car. He says that it was parked in the Willoughby driveway and that the hand brake was set, and he can’t understand what happened. When Jimmy says that maybe the brake just failed, Frothingham says that he doesn’t think it’s likely because it’s a good quality car and well-maintained. When Brains comes along, Jimmy explains the situation to him, and the two of them follow Frothingham to where he has found the Rolls-Royce parked and apparently undamaged.
Frothingham says that he still can’t imagine who was driving the car and just abandoned it, and Jimmy is still sure that he didn’t see anyone behind the wheel. Brains says that he has an idea about it but that this strange occurrence is a sign that something more serious is about to happen. When Frothingham asks him what he means by that, Brains asks him if he’s seen any unusual strangers around the Willoughby estate recently. Frothingham says that he hasn’t, but Brains is still convinced that the people who are after the prince have been around the Willoughby estate already and that there may be something important hidden in the car.
When the boys later see the Rolls-Royce strike a pedestrian, Frothingham is blamed. The boys are sure that he’s innocent, but they didn’t see who was driving the car, so they can’t swear to it. The boys struggle to clear Frothingham’s name.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I liked this story in the series better than the last one that I read because I felt like there was more intrigue and uncertainty. We do have two specific villains that Brains and Jimmy are looking for from the beginning – the men known as Jujab and the Duke. The characters have descriptions of them, and they know that these men pose a threat to the young prince who will be arriving soon. That means that these people haven’t actually done anything yet, but Brains and Jimmy want to find them before they do.
The incidents with the car are odd and seem like they might be unrelated at first, but they are actually part of the villains’ plot. When Frothingham was first introduced, I was suspicious of him because he seems to be British, but the man known as the Duke is known for posing as a British person. Although the characters in the story seem to have known and liked Frothingham for some time, it occurred to me that he could have been planted in Crestwood for longer than Jimmy’s uncle thought. However, that’s not the case. (Spoiler!) Frothingham is just exactly what he seems to be, an innocent man working for a wealthy local woman. In order for Jujab and the Duke to accomplish their mission, they have to establish some kind of identity for themselves in Crestwood. By making it seem like Frothingham committed a hit-and-run, they get his drivers’ license temporarily revoked so that the man known as the Duke can get hired as a temporary chauffeur for Mrs. Willoughby. Mrs. Willoughby is the one who’s going to meet the young prince when he arrives, so her chauffeur is in a perfect position for some foul play.
The boys have all the information they need to figure this out about halfway through the book, but what makes this book intriguing is that there’s more going on than just the evil half-uncle’s associates trying to get to the prince. When the prince actually arrives, the boys ask him what happens at a coronation ceremony in his country. (This is part of why the prince comes from a fictional country. Not only does the author not have to account for real people and events in a real country, but he can also make up any customs he wants for this country.) The prince describes the ceremony, including a part where the new Emir drinks spring water called the “Water of Life” from a special Golden Vial that has been used for the purpose for generations. The ceremony cannot take place without this Golden Vial, and Brains realizes that, although the prince believes that the vial is back in his home country with his half-uncle, it has actually been transported to the US. It turns out that Mrs. Willoughby’s car was originally owned by the prince’s father and that he left it to her because she was a friend of his and had admired it … and maybe because he hoped that his son would also go to her and retrieve the Golden Vial from the car. The half-uncle’s associates are not just in the US to find the prince but to retrieve this Golden Vial because, without it, the half-uncle cannot be coronated at all.
One other point I thought I would mention is that, when Jimmy first saw the car and didn’t see a driver, I thought that, for some reason, the villains installed a remote control device in the car. This book was written a few years before remote controlled cars were first sold, but with Brains interested in new inventions, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility. However, that’s not the case with this story. The car does have a driver; it’s just that he’s crouched down so he can’t be seen as well. Science and invention enter the story when they realize that they can find the Golden Vial with a Geiger counter because it contains a special stone that contains radioactive material.
The Case of the Counterfeit Coin by George Wyatt (Charles Spain Verral), 1960.
One Saturday, Jimmy Carson is going around, collecting fees from customers on his paper route, when he decides to stop for a soda. To his surprise, he discovers that one of the coins he has received from a customer turns out to be something very unusual. It appears to be from a foreign country, although Jimmy doesn’t recognize what country it’s from. When someone suggests that it could be a rare and valuable coin, Jimmy decides to call his friend and detective partner Brains Benton and ask him what he thinks about it. However, as Jimmy is talking to Brains at a public pay phone, someone tries to reach into the phone booth to grab the coin! Luckily, Jimmy notices in time and yells, and the person doesn’t succeed in getting the coin. Jimmy isn’t able to see the person’s face, but he gets a good look at their hand, the person’s hand has an odd, blackened thumbnail.
It seems that the coin has greater significance for someone than just an odd foreign coin that they accidentally spent instead of American money. When Brains looks at the coin, he identifies it as an ancient Athenian coin, but he also notices that someone has used modern implements on the coin and a varnish to make it look older than it really is. In other words, the coin might at first look like a collector’s coin, but it’s actually a fake. So, if the coin is fake, where did come from, and who wants it so badly?
The boys start going over Jimmy’s route to try to figure out where the coin came from and if any of Jimmy’s customers have a blackened thumbnail. It turns out that the coin came from Binky Barnes’s house. Binky is about their age, but the boys consider him to be a nuisance because he has a way of exaggerating things and is always telling tall tales. You can’t believe a lot of things that Binky says, but the coin apparently came from Binky’s coin collection. It was a new acquisition, and his mother was the one who accidentally gave it to Jimmy when paying him for their news delivery. That still doesn’t explain who was trying to steal it from Jimmy.
Binky is upset when the boys tell him that his coin is a fake, but they point out that he’s legally entitled to get his money back from the person who sold it to him. Binky says that he bought the coin at an old junk shop owned by a man named Silas Gorme. When the boys go to the shop with Binky, they discover that Silas Gorme is the man with the blackened thumbnail who tried to steal the coin from Jimmy!
Silas Gorme is quick to offer Binky a refund in exchange for getting the coin back, but Brains confronts him about how he tried to steal the coin from Jimmy earlier and demands to know where the coin came from. Gorme finally agrees to take the boys to the coin dealer he purchased the coin from, Jeremy Dexter. Gorme tells Dexter that he wants his money back because the coin is fake, but Dexter denies selling him a fake coin. When Dexter examines the coin, he confirms that it’s fake and that it looks like the coin he sold Gorme, but he insists that the coin he sold was authentic.
During the conversation with Dexter, it is revealed that Gorme sold the coin to Binky for less than he paid when it bought it from Dexter, which looks suspicious. Then, they find the tools used for creating the fake coin in Dexter’s shop, which also looks suspicious. Dexter denies that those tools belong to him, but the situation has now become a police matter. Brains is sure that Gorme planted the tools in Dexter’s shop to frame him, and Jimmy is concerned that Dexter is in trouble because of them. Can the boys figure out what Gorme’s game really is and prove it?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
This story has the trope of a tomboy girl who is mistaken for a boy. Jeremy Dexter has a daughter called Terry. Terry is one of those neutral names that can be nicknames for other, longer names. In this case, Terry is short for Theresa. When the boys first meet her, she’s dressed in clothes that a boy might wear and a baseball cap, and when she gets mad at the boys for getting her father into trouble with the police, she tries to hit Brains and accidentally hits Jimmy. At first, Jimmy is ready to get into a fight with Terry, thinking that Terry is another boy, but Brains stops him and points out that Terry is actually a girl. Traditionally, it isn’t considered acceptable for a boy to hit or get into a fight with a girl, so Jimmy would look bad for hitting Terry back, even though she struck first. The whole situation is something of an old-fashioned trope that’s partly there to show how bright Brains is for noticing something that Jimmy didn’t.
Terry is also a Scrappy-Doo-like character, picking fights to prove she’s tough and charging in when she’s not supposed to, messing things up. Brains and Jimmy find her annoying because of that, and frankly, so did I. A tough and intelligent girl is good and could be a real help to the boys as well as being a client, but Terry’s a thoughtless, put-up-your-dukes kind of character and doesn’t really add anything to the plot besides comic relief. Really, it’s odd for her to be the kind of character who sees fist fighting as her first resort because her father is such a gentle, intellectual type. I just don’t see the point in it.
The mystery itself seems pretty obvious. Considering that only Dexter, the boys, and Gorme are present in Dexter shop when the counterfeiting tools are discovered, it seems pretty obvious who planted them. This is one of those books where there’s less emphasis on whodunit than how they’re going to prove it. I’m not that big on most howdunit style stories, but this one does have a bit of a twist because the boy discover that Gorme is really only the tip of the iceberg. He’s not just an unethical shopkeeper selling one duplicate coin so he can sell his antique coin and have it, too. I turns out that he’s just one member of a larger counterfeiting ring, and the others aren’t happy with him for drawing attention to their activities. Brains and Jimmy infiltrate the gang’s hideout to get the proof that they need to prove what’s really going on to the authorities.
Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point or Nita, the Girl Castaway by Alice B. Emerson (the Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1913.
When this story begins, Ruth’s friend Helen is finally being initiated into the society that Ruth and some of their friends founded at their boarding school, Briarwood Hall. In the second book of the Ruth Fielding series, when the girls started attending Briarwood, they found themselves caught between two rival social groups. One of them had the reputation for being led too much by the school faculty instead of the students themselves. Ruth, Helen, and some of the other girls craved more independence from the teachers. However, the other main social group, which was more student-led, was led by a sly bully of a girl named Mary Cox. That group had basically turned into a cult of personality centered around Mary Cox, where everyone else had to do whatever she said. The initiation into Mary Cox’s group was a mean trick, and Mary Cox, known as “the Fox” to many girls at school because of her slyness, used bullying tactics to dominate the other girls.
For awhile, Helen was a member of Mary Cox’s group, finding it exciting, but Mary Cox took exception to Ruth very soon after they first met because Ruth is more independent-minded and not easily led or intimidated by Mary. Although Ruth was one of the new girls at school and one of the youngest, she decided to assert her independence and create a new society without some of the problems that plagued the older ones. She found other interested girls who felt the same way she did, and they soon attracted more members who were similarly tired of the old groups. Ruth’s group is called the Sweetbriars, or S.B.s for short, although Ruth frequently reminds people that the group is not hers exclusively. To avoid the problem with Mary’s group, having everything monopolized by one person, Ruth established in the rules that leadership of the Sweetbriars will rotate, with no member serving as the club president for more than one year. That way, no one will have total control, and there will be opportunities for new people with fresh ideas to get more involved.
Helen, who eventually figured out what kind of person Mary was, stuck with her group for awhile anyway, out of loyalty to the membership, but since then, Mary’s group has fallen apart. Helen was one of the last to leave it, but Mary is still resentful that many of her old members have joined the Sweetbriars, including Helen.
Shortly after Helen’s initiation, Ruth and her friends are talking about taking a summer trip to a friend’s beach house. They started talking about their summer plans over the winter break, and now, they’re making the final arrangements. Mary, still looking for ways to cause trouble for Ruth and the Sweetbriars and regain her social dominance, tells Helen that the only reason she’s being invited to the beach house is because she’s now a Sweetbriar, implying that the other girls wouldn’t have wanted her around if she hadn’t joined their club. Frankly, Helen is a bit of a sucker and falls for Mary’s manipulation. She confronts the other girls about what Mary said.
The other girls all remind her that, first of all, they started planning this trip well before her initiation. Second, they are inviting people who aren’t part of the Sweetbriars. They’ve invited Madge, who is the student leader of the faculty-led social club, and she’s coming. They’ve also invited some boys, brothers of girls at the school and their friends, who attend the nearby boys’ boarding school. Helen says that Madge is also an honorary Sweetbriar, even though she’s in another club, and the other girls correctly realize that Mary’s comments to Helen were a manipulation to secure her own invitation. The girl whose family owns the beach house, Jennie Stone (nicknamed “Heavy” by the other girls because she’s “stout”), is actually one of Mary’s roommates at school, and she reminds Helen that she also invited Mary but that Mary was non-committal about accepting.
The girls debate among themselves whether or not Heavy should renew the invitation and encourage Mary to come with them. It’s pretty obvious to the girls (except maybe Helen) that Mary is being manipulative and probably has a trick up her sleeve. (They don’t call Mary “the Fox” for nothing, and if the reader has any doubts that this is a ploy, Mary is listening to this whole conversation through the keyhole.) Mercy, known for her outspokenness, thinks they should all just forget about Mary because her meanness will spoil the fun. Ruth doesn’t like Mary, either, but she can see that Helen will feel bad if they act exclusionary, and Mary will try to use that against them. Ruth tells Heavy that it’s only right for her to invite her roommate, and not only does Ruth want her to invite Mary, she insists on it.
So, Mary will be going to the beach house with the other girls, but before their trip even gets started, the situation is rocky. When the girls get on the boat that will take them from the school to the train station, Mary goofs off, teasing one of the other girls, and she ends up falling overboard. Since Mary can’t swim, Ruth has to jump in and save her. This is the second time that Ruth has saved Mary’s life since she arrived at the school. The first time, Mary credited the rescue to Helen’s brother, Tom, who also helped, but this time, Ruth gets the credit alone, and everyone witnessed it. One of the other girls says that Mary will have to change her attitude toward Ruth now, but Ruth knows that isn’t likely. Just because Mary might owe her some gratitude for the rescue doesn’t mean that Mary will like her, and Mary is the kind who would resent “owing” a person she doesn’t like.
Worse still, Ruth learns that her Uncle Jabez has lost a considerable amount of money in a bad investment, and he might not be able to afford to sent her back to Briarwood Hall! It’s a heavy blow because she’s finally settled in there and has a good group of friends. He’s become so paranoid about money again that he might also stop the money he was contributing toward Mercy’s education, which would be a double blow.
Ruth is an ambitious girl and determined not to give up on her education so easily. Raising the money for her next year’s tuition would be difficult all on her own, but Ruth knows that she has to find a way to do it over the summer. At first, she isn’t sure that she should go to the seaside with the others as planned, but Uncle Jabez surprises her by giving her some money and telling her to go. As the girls set out on their trip, Heavy also tells Ruth that Mary Cox’s family is having trouble. Mary’s father died a year ago, leaving the family with money problems, and her brother left college to tend to his father’s business affairs. Now, her brother has disappeared on a business trip, and she and her mother are worried about him. With the girls’ problems hanging over their heads, they all set off for Heavy’s family’s seaside bungalow at Lighthouse Point.
When the party arrives at Lighthouse Point in Maine, there’s a storm, and they hear that there’s a shipwreck on a nearby reef. The young people all go down to the seaside to watch the rescue efforts. At first, they think it’s all very exciting, but then, the destructive power of the storm and the real risk to the rescuers makes them realize the seriousness of the situation. They watch, horrified, as a lifeboat overturns in the storm. It seems like there won’t be any survivors of the wreck, but some people are saved.
Among the survivors is a girl who calls herself Nita. Nita, who is about the same age as Ruth and her friends, admits to being a runaway, but she is evasive about where she came from and what her situation is. The ship captain’s wife, Mrs. Kirby, is also rescued, and she says that it’s her impression that Nita was not well cared for when they first met and that Nita was trying to go to New York, possibly to stay with some relatives there. Nita says that she wants to go to New York, but she is still evasive about why, what she plans to do there, or if she knows anyone there.
In spite of her recent traumatic experience, Nita is very self-controlled, mentally sharp, and even a bit sly. The party of young people and Heavy’s Aunt Kate take Nita with them to the bungalow where they give her a bed and question her more about her past. She lets a couple of things slip, referring to a man named Jib Pottoway, who was a “part Injun” (that’s how Nita puts it, she means that part of his family is Native American, saying that “Jib” is short for Jibbeway, which is apparently either an older version or slang corruption of Ojibwe) “cow puncher” who lent her books to read. Nita apparently came east from somewhere in the western United States, having romantic notions from books about how poor girls can make friends with wealthy families in the east who can help them with their education and help them rise up in society. She’s been finding out that the realities of the east are very different from what she’s read in books, but she still has her stubborn pride. Nita says that she can move on if the others don’t want her around or if they’re getting too nosy about her past, but Aunt Kate is reluctant to let her go until she knows whether Nita is going to be able to manage on her own or has somewhere to go.
Since Nita has only the clothes she was rescued in and those are ruined, the part gets her some new clothes to wear. They notice that a somewhat disreputable man named Jack Crab seems strangely interested in Nita, as if he recognizes her from somewhere. There is an explanation later when Tom picks up a newspaper clipping that Jack Crab drops about a girl named Jane Ann Hicks, who has run away from her wealthy uncle who owns a ranch in Montana. Nita certainly first the description of the missing Jane Ann. In her uncle’s and the reporter’s words, “‘Jane Ann got some powerful hifalutin’ notions.’ She is now a well-grown girl, smart as a whip, pretty, afraid of nothing on four legs, and just as ignorant as a girl brought up in such an environment would be. Jane Ann has been reading novels, perhaps. As the Eastern youth used to fill up on cheap stories of the Far West, and start for that wild and woolly section with the intention of wiping from the face of Nature the last remnant of the Red Tribes, so it may be that Jane Ann Hicks has read of the Eastern millionaire and has started for the Atlantic seaboard for the purpose of lassoing one–or more–of those elusive creatures.” They’ve got her pegged, although the “or more” part of lassoing millionaires makes her sound more like a gold-digging adventuress than an overly-romantic teenager who’s read too many novels. However, if Nita really is Jane Ann Hicks with a wealthy, ranch-owning uncle, why would she need to find a wealthy benefactor to buy her the piano she says she wants and fund her education?
Nita runs away from the beach house, but unfortunately, she trusts the wrong person and is soon in need of Ruth and her friends to rescue her again.
The book is now public domain and is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies) and Project Gutenberg.
My Reaction and Spoilers
Racial Language and Other Issues
I think I should start with a warning that there are some issues with racial language in this book, which is pretty common with early Stratemeyer Syndicate books. I already mentioned the word “Injun” and the newspaper article that mentions “Red Tribes” above. I also noticed that in the article that describes Jane Ann’s disappearance, it is mentioned that she was raised by her uncle alone at his ranch “for a woman has never been at Silver Ranch, save Indian squaws and a Mexican cook woman.” I’m sure they’d be thrilled to find that they don’t count. The Stone family’s cook at their beach house is a black lady called “Mammy Laura” who speaks in a stereotypical way with phrases like “lawsy massy.” (Although, to be fair, Mr. Hicks the rancher also speaks like a stereotypical cowboy, so stereotypes are being used in a very general way and not directed at any group in particular. I know, it’s still not great.)
It’s also a little uncomfortable how they keep referring to Mercy as “the lame girl” or “the cripple.” They don’t seem to mean it as an insult, more as a general description, and it’s true that it’s one of Mercy’s characteristics and a major part of her storyline in the first book. Her health has improved since then, although it’s established that she’s never going to be able to walk as well as other people and will always need some assistance, like crutches. It’s just that it feel like we’re being beaten over the head with it when they keep repeating that she’s “lame.” I think they’re trying to do it as a descriptor, trying to make the writing a little more colorful by referring to characters by some part of their appearance and not just by name, like how they keep calling Ruth “the girl from the Red Mill”, but it falls flat because it seems insensitive and shallow. First of all, this isn’t something that readers are likely to forget and need to be constantly reminded about Mercy. Second, it gives the impression that this is Mercy’s main characteristic. Mercy is the most blunt and sarcastic character among the girls, and she has quite a lot of personality, so she does have characteristics beyond her disability. Third, in the first book, they establish how much Mercy hates her disability and how bitter she was about it until she found a way to improve her situation, make friends, and move forward with her life and education. It doesn’t seem like she’d enjoy people constantly calling her “cripple” and “lame”, and it would be completely in character for her to bluntly say so if asked, so it’s a little uncomfortable when the invisible narrator of the book keeps doing it.
Heavy’s nickname is also a little irritating. She doesn’t seem to mind it, but this is a good opportunity to point out that older Stratemeyer Syndicate books do have a tendency to use characters’ weights as one of their defining characteristics. Even up through later series, like Nancy Drew, characters are often specifically described in terms like “slender”, “slim”, “stout”, etc. Typically, in Stratemeyer Syndicate stories, the slimmer characters are either the main characters or the nicer or more talented ones, while the fatter ones are either more comic relief, socially awkward, or villains. Actually, one of the things I like about Heavy is that she doesn’t fall into this pattern. Heavy is pleasant, cheerful, practical, and generous.
The Runaway
As Ruth considers Jane Ann’s position and why she would run away from her uncle, she remembers that she also considered running away from Uncle Jabez when she first came to live with him. Both Ruth and Jane Ann are orphans who depend on their uncles, who control the family finances and their education. Jane Ann’s uncle is far richer than Uncle Jabez, but he also has firm ideas about the kind of life Jane Ann is going to live as the future heiress to his ranch and what kind of education she’s going to need. He rejects the kind of education a girl would have on the east coast of the US as being too “effete” for a young woman who will someday have to manage a ranch with tough “cow punchers.” However, Jane Ann wants some of the refinements of east coast culture, like her own piano, an education, and the company of other girls her own age who share her interests, none of which are available at her uncle’s ranch. It’s true that Jane Ann has a lot of unrealistic notions about life from the books she’s been reading, but that’s largely because cheap romantic novels have been her main source of information about life outside of her uncle’s ranch. Getting an education and more interaction with the outside world would do her some good. Actually, I think Jane Ann’s problem does reflect a problem that exists even in modern education, when parents and instructors are so focused on job training and the roles they think the young are going to fill in life that they neglect the subjects that give students a broader view of life and how the world works, their roles as human beings outside of career roles, and their relationships to other human beings in the world.
When Mr. Hicks comes to the beach house later, looking for his niece, Ruth talks to him about what she knows about Jane Ann/Nita and what Jane Ann really wants. Mercy also adds some criticism because she has “a sharp tongue and a sharper insight into character”, pointing out to Hicks in no uncertain terms what a young girl needs and how she feels about things. Her criticism of the name “Jane Ann”, which seems as dull and plain to the other girls as Jane Ann thought it was herself, seems a little overdone. Jane Ann’s uncle picked that name because it was his grandmother’s name, and it is traditional for certain names to be reused in families. It’s not as romantic and modern as the girls think it should be, but it’s also simple and classic and could really belong to just about any time period, so I don’t think it’s as old-fashioned as they’re implying. I do appreciate Mercy’s straightforward talk and how she speaks her mind without being intimidated by either Hicks’s age or wealth. Mercy really is a character with a personality, which makes her different from some of the other cookie-cutter characters in Stratemeyer Syndicate books with little variation in their personalities, and she’s one of my favorites in this series.
Like other books in the series, there is an element of mystery, but the book tends to lean more toward adventure. However, as the series goes on, the stories are becoming more mystery, and this one is more mystery than previous books. There is first the question of who Nita really is. The newspaper clipping provides a clue, although it’s not a firm answer until Jane Ann’s uncle shows up, looking for her. Then, there is the question of where Jane Ann went after she left the beach house. Ruth is sure that Crab had something to do with her disappearance, but she and her friends have to do some intentional investigating and searching for Jane Ann to rescue her. In spite of some of the problematic language, I like the direction this series is heading.
At the end of the story, there is still something unresolved, and that’s how Ruth is going to pay for her boarding school. Jane Ann’s uncle offers a reward for rescuing her, but Ruth can’t bring herself to accept it because she doesn’t want it to appear that she was only helping Jane Ann for the sake of the money. Instead, she and her friends will be rewarded with a trip to the ranch where Jane Ann and her uncle live.
Odd Piece of Trivia
When Jack Crab tries to pester Nita about what her name is, Mercy bluntly tells him off using a children’s retort:
“Puddin’ Tame!” retorted Mercy, breaking in, in her shrill way. “And she lives in the lane, and her number’s cucumber! There now! do you know all you want to know, Hardshell?”
I not only appreciate that she pokes fun at Crab’s name, calling him “Hardshell“, but she brings up an interesting piece of children’s lore. The “Puddin’ Tame” retort was old-fashioned when I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was a popular playground retort for decades, maybe over a hundred years, although I’m not sure of its actual age, and it’s possible that it’s still circulating in schools and playgrounds somewhere. When kids say it, the quick rhyme is more important than the meaning, although there are theories that “Pudding Tame” or “Pudding Tane” (as some people say it) is a reference to a devil character called Pudding of Thame.
Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp or Lost in the Backwoods by Alice B. Emerson (the Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1913.
It’s shortly after Christmas, and Ruth and her friends, the Cameron twins, Helen and Tom, are home from boarding school. They’re excited because the twins’ father has purchased a snow camp, a kind of winter retreat in the woods, with a nice cabin that has enough room for the twins, Ruth, and some of their school friends. In fact, Mr. Cameron is allowing the young people to take a party of their friends there soon, before school starts again.
However, before they leave on their trip, Ruth and the twins have an unexpected confrontation with a neighbor’s bull that causes a boy hiding in a hollow log to be knocked into a freezing creek. They manage to rescue the boy and take him back to the Red Mill to warm up.
The boy reluctantly explains that he is Fred Hatfield and that he has run away from home, which is in Scarboro, New York, close to the snow camp. His father is dead, and he says that he has plenty of other siblings to help his mother at home. He is evasive about why he felt the need to run away, just saying that he was tired of where he was, and he’s sure his family won’t miss him. None of the adults are impressed by that explanation, saying that they’re sure that a mother would miss any of her children, no matter how many others she might have.
Ruth spots a newspaper clipping that Fred dropped, and when she picks it up and reads it, she realizes that Fred’s situation is more serious than anyone else thinks. At first, she doesn’t tell anyone else about the clipping, not sure how much she should reveal about what she knows (even to the readers). However, knowing that Fred might try to run away, she hides his trousers so he can’t leave in the middle of the night.
The next day, they tell Fred that the young people are going to the snow camp near Scarboro, and that Mr. Cameron will take Fred there on the train when he escorts his children and their friends there. As Ruth anticipates, Fred doesn’t want to go back to Scarboro. He tries more than once to run away, and one of his attempts to run and Ruth’s attempt to stop him cause them both to be separated from the rest of the party, lost in the winter woods. Fred isn’t happy with Ruth for tagging along with him and interfering in his business, and Ruth says that she’s not going to let him abandon her in the woods.
Together, they have a frightening encounter with a with a panther and get help from a hermit living in the woods. The hermit is a strange man who keeps rattlesnakes as pets, although the poison sacs have been removed. He teaches the Ruth and Fred to walk in snow shoes, and he helps them to reach the snow camp. They actually manage to get there before the rest of their party does, but Fred disappears just as they arrive.
When Ruth calls her friends in town to let them know that she’s all right and that she’s reached the snow camp, Mr. Cameron shocks her by telling her that the boy she’s known as Fred can’t possibly be the real Fred Hatfield. Mr. Cameron has learned from the local authorities that Fred Hatfield was killed in an apparent hunting accident months ago, although some people wonder if it was actually a murder. Fred’s half brother is being held by the authorities for Fred’s death. Did Fred just fake his death and run away? Or is the boy they know as Fred someone else entirely?
The book is now public domain and is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies) and Project Gutenberg.
My Reaction and Spoilers
When we’re first told that Fred Hatfield was supposedly killed in a hunting accident, they mention that the boy’s body apparently rolled into a river after being shot, making it seem like Fred could still be alive, but then we’re told that the boy’s body was recovered from the river. That means that either Fred is actually dead and this new runaway Fred is an imposter or some other boy has been killed and Fred is just letting everyone think that the dead boy is him. Either way, there is a runaway boy whose identity needs to be established and a dead body whose identity also needs to be confirmed, and the circumstances of that death also need to be established. What really happened during that fateful hunting trip?
I liked the premise of this book because it’s much more of a mystery than the previous two books in the series. However, as an early Stratemeyer Syndicate book, there isn’t much deliberate investigation of the mystery. Most of the story is more adventure-oriented, and the characters learn the truth of the mystery almost by accident and through Fred’s eventual confession. In between, the characters have some outdoor winter fun. The girls make some homemade candy, which the boys spoil with a prank, causing some boy/girl rivalry. The girls get lost in a bad snow storm while trying to prove that they can be as daring and innovative as the boys when it comes to having fun and end up having to rescue Fred as well, which is when the solution to the story is revealed.
The solution is pretty much what people thought it was, which is a bit of a let down. At first, I thought that there might be more of a plot twist. Even the true identity of the dead body isn’t very exciting. Fred was labeled as a bad boy in the beginning, and that turns out to be true, but his half brother also admits that he was pretty hard on Fred at home because he’s smaller and not as physically strong as his older half brothers. They criticized Fred for not keeping up with the physical work they were doing and called him lazy, but realistically, Fred can’t do all the things they do, and his half brothers realize that they have to acknowledge and accept that. They say that they’re going to try to find him a different kind of work that he can do.
It’s not a bad ending, but I’d like to see a little more deliberate investigation from Ruth Fielding. I would have liked to see Ruth Fielding talk to other members of Fred’s family and maybe have one of them produce a picture of Fred to help establish his identity. Then, I’d like to have Ruth and her friends find Fred more deliberately than accidentally. The story isn’t bad the way it is, and there’s plenty of adventure, but as a mystery fan, I usually prefer more deliberate detective work.
Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall by Alice B. Emerson, 1913.
Since Ruth and her friends have helped her Uncle Jabez to recover his stolen cash box in the previous book, Uncle Jabez has decided to send Ruth to Briarwood Hall, the boarding school that her best friend, Helen Cameron will attend, so the two of them can stay together. Briarwood Hall is an exclusive school, where the primary entrance requirements are academic records and teacher recommendations. Ruth has already graduated from the local school in her uncle’s town although she is a little younger than Helen, and she is ready for the high school level. Helen’s twin brother, Tom, will be attending a military academy close to the girls’ boarding school.
The three of them travel alone to their schools, without adult chaperones. They amuse themselves by seeing if there are other students bound for their schools traveling on the same train and steamboat they take to their boarding schools, but they can’t find any. However, they do see an interesting older lady with a veiled hat who attracts their attention because she looks doll-like and speaks French. For some reason, this lady seems greatly upset by a strange man with a harp who is part of a musical group entertaining passengers on the steamboat.
The mysterious French woman turns out to be the girls’ new French teacher at Briarwood Hall. She seems very nice to the girls when they are introduced to her as they’re riding in a coach to the school after they get off the boat. Mary Cox, a fellow student who is older than Ruth and Helen, rides to the school with the girls and the French teacher. On the way to the school, Ruth notices that Mary seems to oddly ignore the French teacher, speaking only to her and Helen.
Mary is a Junior at the school, and tells the girls about the school clubs. The two main clubs at Briarwood are the “Upedes” and the “Fussy Curls.” I was glad that Ruth and Helen thought that these sounded by strange names for clubs, too. Mary explains that they’re just nicknames for the official club names. The Upedes are members of the Up and Doing Club, a group of girls who like lively activities. There are other groups at school, like the basketball players, but the Upedes and Fussy Curls have a particular rivalry for members. Mary is a member of the Upedes, although, in spite of the groups’ rivalry for gaining new members, Mary strangely doesn’t invite Ruth and Helen to join her group and doesn’t seem to want to explain what the rival group does.
When the girls leave the coach, Mary says that she doesn’t like the French teacher because she’s a poor foreigner, and Mary doesn’t know why she’s at the school. (Mary sounds like she’s rather a snob.) Mary says that she thinks it’s strange that the French teacher never wears any nice clothes and doesn’t seem to have any personal friends or relations. (Yeah, definitely a snob toward someone who just seems a bit unfortunate, like it’s some kind of moral failing, not having nice clothes or personal connections to show off.) Helen says that the French teacher does have personal acquaintances because she seemed to know the harp player on the boat, something that seems to interest Mary. Ruth has the uneasy feeling that they shouldn’t have mentioned it, not knowing exactly what the teacher’s connection to the harp player is. Helen likes Mary, but Ruth has reservations about her friendship.
Mary Cox shows the girls where their dorm room is. Helen and Ruth are sharing a room by themselves. Another girl, a senior named Madge Steel, comes by to talk to the girls and invites them to a meeting of the Forward Club (known as the “Fussy Curls” because of its initials) that evening. Ruth wants to go to that meeting because Madge seems very nice, and the Forward Club includes members of the school faculty. However, Helen says that she’d rather attend the meeting of the Upedes that evening that Mary told her about. Helen thinks that they owe Mary their loyalty because she was the first to meet them and was helpful in finding their room. Besides, the Upedes have no teachers in their club, and Helen thinks that it sounds more exciting and free from supervision than the Forward Club. Ruth thinks that she would prefer to get closer to her new teachers and some well-behaved girls instead, and it’s the first major disagreement that the friends have. Mary talks Ruth into going to the meeting of the Upedes that evening because that was the invitation that they received first, but Ruth says that she won’t join any club officially until she’s had a chance to see the other girls involved and learn what the clubs are really like. Ruth’s stance seems to be the wise one as the school’s headmistress tells the girls that joining clubs on campus are fun but that they should beware of getting involved too much with girls who don’t take their studies seriously and waste their time, and they learn that Mary Cox’s nickname at school is “the Fox”, suggesting that she’s as sly as Ruth has sensed. Although Mary didn’t mention it to the girls before, she’s actually the leader of the Upedes.
That evening, the girls are introduced to other students, and at the meeting of the Upedes, the school’s very own ghost story. Briarwood wasn’t always a school. It used to be a private mansion, and a wealthy man lived there with his beautiful daughter. The wealthy man was the one who commissioned the creation of the fountain with the marble statue that still stands on the school’s grounds. Although people on campus say that nobody really knows what the statue of the woman playing a harp in the fountain is supposed to represent, the ghost story claims that the figure was modeled after the beautiful daughter of the mansion’s former owner. However, according to the story, the girl fell in love with the man who sculpted the statue of her, and the two of them eloped, leaving her father alone and sad. Rumor had it, though, that the girl and her new husband must have died somewhere after they ran away because people started hearing mysterious harp music at night on the grounds of the mansion. Eventually, Briarwood was sold, and the school’s founders, the Tellinghams, bought it, and sometimes, people still hear harp music on the school grounds. Every time something strange or momentous happens at the school, people hear the twang of the harp.
That night, Ruth and Helen become the targets of a frightening hazing stunt by the Upedes that seems to bring the ghost story to life, but when something happens that frightens even the hazers, it brings into question how much of the ghost story is really true.
The book is now public domain and available to read for free online in several formats through Project Gutenberg. There is also an audio book version on Internet Archive.
Spoilers and My Reaction:
I liked this story much better than the first book in the series because it is more directly a mystery story than the first book, and Ruth makes a deliberate effort to untangle some of the puzzling things happening at her new school.
It’s pretty obvious that there is a connection between the ghost story of the girl with the harp and the French teacher’s apparent discomfort at the suspicious harpist. Ruth finds out pretty quickly that the harpist from the boat is lurking around the school. That revelation explains the frightening happenings at the hazing incident, although it still leaves the question of the connection between the harpist and the French teacher. At first, I thought that it was going to turn out that there is some truth to the ghost story the Upedes told, but that actually has nothing to do with the real situation. In some ways, I felt like the real situation was a little to straight-forward and resolved a bit too quickly at the end, considering the build-up they’d had about it. It is interesting that, of the students at the school, only Ruth comes to learn the full truth of the French teacher’s secret. Even Helen doesn’t know what Ruth eventually discovers, partly to save the French teacher’s reputation and partly because Ruth and Helen’s friendship is suffering for part of the book.
Unlike newer series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, characters in the older Stratemeyer series, including the Ruth Fielding series, grow, age, and develop their lives and personalities. In this book, when the girls go away to boarding school, the differences in Helen and Ruth’s backgrounds and personalities become more obvious. It leads them to clash in some ways, and they both worry about endangering their friendship with each other, but by the end of the book, each of the girls develop a greater sense of who they are and what they really stand for.
Helen is more familiar and comfortable than Ruth is with the traditional rituals of boarding school, even taking some glee in the mean hazing ritual of the Upedes, and she badly wants to fit in with the cooler older girls at school, willing to put up with their mean bossing to take part in their schemes for the fun and excitement. However, Ruth, is naturally more serious and shy and less accustomed to having things her way or telling others what to do anywhere she’s lived than the wealthy Helen. Ruth overcomes some of her shyness and learns to be more assertive as she stands up for herself and the other new girls at school, called “Infants” by the older girls. Ruth decides to refuse to join either the Forward Club, which has a reputation of being made up of girls who toady up to the school faculty, or the Upedes (which was initially founded as a protest group to the Forward Club, which is why most of the activities of their club involve breaking various school rules and instigating pranks), after experiencing their mean pranks and bossiness. Instead, she takes a joke of Helen’s seriously and decides to form a secret society of her own. She talks to some of the other new girls at school, and they feel the same way they do, that they don’t want to choose between either the Upedes or the Fussy Curls and would rather have a club of their own, where they won’t be dominated or hazed by the older girls. Helen gets upset at Ruth starting this new group because she thinks that they won’t gain any new friends or have any real fun or really be a part of this school if they don’t join an already-established group. Helen thinks that a group of new girls would look ridiculous because they wouldn’t know what to do with their club and will look like a group of babies. However, Ruth realizes that this is nonsense. There are enough interested girls among the newcomers to give them a good group of friends and they can think of their own things to do where they can be the leaders. Ruth turns out to be more of a leader and Helen more of a follower, and Ruth is also more creative, thinking of new possibilities in life instead of stuck with someone else’s creation. I wish that the book had gone into more details about what Ruth’s club actually does. She and some of the other girls periodically go to meetings of their club, but they don’t say much about what they do at the meetings.
Helen and Ruth temporarily go separate ways at school. Helen joins the Upedes, and Ruth and some of the other new girls carry out the plan to form a new club that they call The Sweetbriars. The other girls who help form The Sweetbriars are as independently-minded and creative as Ruth and like the idea of forming their own school traditions. Helen criticizes Ruth for being a stickler from the rules because she doesn’t want to take part in school stunts that might get her in trouble, but although Helen is more inclined to break rules in the name of fun, she is still less independent in her mind than Ruth because her rule-breaking is done following the dictates of the Upedes and the traditional school stunts of having midnight feasts with other girls in their dorm rooms. They are not stunts of her own creation or particularly imaginative, and while she is brave about school demerits, she is not very brave about what other people think about her. After the Upedes have treated Ruth very badly and spread rumors about her, Ruth finds the courage to tell Helen how hurt she is that she continues to be friends with people who have treated her so badly when she wouldn’t have put up with people mistreating a friend of hers. She doesn’t ask for an apology and says that she’s not sure that one is even warranted, but she wants Helen to know how she feels. Helen has felt like hanging around Mary Cox has made her act like a meaner person, and she feels like she can’t help herself in Mary’s company. Understanding how Ruth really feels reminds Helen that she risks damaging her relationship with her best friend if she doesn’t do something about her behavior, and when Mary is ungrateful and lies to Helen after Ruth and Helen’s brother help save her life during a skating accident, Helen begins to see Mary for what she really is.
In the second half of the book, the Mercy Curtis from the first book in the series reappears. In the first book, she spent most of the time being bitter because she had a physical disability that prevented her from walking, and she was overly sensitive about how people looked her. However, at the end of the first book, Mercy received some treatment from a surgical specialist that has enabled her to regain her ability to walk. She still walks with crutches, but her spirits have improved now that she is able to move more easily on her own, without relying on her wheelchair. Because she had previously spent much of her time alone, studying, she qualifies for admittance to Briarwood and decides that she would like to join her friends, Ruth and Helen. When Mercy comes to the school, she is still sharp-tongued, although less bitter about herself. She rooms with Ruth and Helen and joins the Sweetbriars. She adds a nice balance to Ruth and Helen’s friendship. Ruth gets to spend some time with Mercy and the other Sweetbriars when Helen is with the Upedes, and Mercy is very serious about her studies, so she insists that her friends not neglect theirs, keeping then on task in the middle of their social dramas.
As a historical note, there is a place in the story in, Ch. 22, where the book describes Ruth as wearing a sweater, defining it as if readers might not know exactly what a sweater was, calling it “one of those stretching, clinging coats.” The reason for that is that sweaters were actually a relatively new fashion development for women in 1910s, although men had worn sweaters before. Women often wore shawls in cold weather before sweaters became popular, but sweaters left a woman’s arms more able to move freely than a shawl would allow, as this video about women’s clothing during World War I from CrowsEyeProductions explains.
#1 Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill or Jasper Parloe’s Secret, by Alice B. Emerson (The Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1913.
In the first book of the Ruth Fielding mysteries, one of the older series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, young Ruth Fielding has recently lost her parents and is traveling by train to New York state to live with her Great Uncle Jabez. She has never met him before, but she knows that he lives in a red mill outside of a small town. She meets the town doctor on the train when he notices how sad she looks and explains to him why she’s traveling to her great uncle’s home. Her old home was in a poor area, and although she would have liked to stay with her friends there after her father’s death, no one would have been able to keep her. Then, the train unexpectedly stops when the engineer sees what looks like a warning light.
It turns out that the light is a red lamp tied to a large mastiff, who seems very upset. Ruth, who is good with dogs, is the only person who is able to calm the dog enough to get a look at the dog’s tag. It turns out that the dog belongs to Tom Cameron, who doesn’t live too far from where her Great Uncle lives. Tom Cameron comes from a wealthy family, and he has a reputation for being a wild boy. The lamp tied to the dog appears to come from his motorcycle, and there is a note tied to the dog that appears to be written in blood and only says, “Help.” Ruth is very upset, thinking that the dog’s owner must be badly hurt somewhere. The adults around her aren’t so sure because they think Tom could be playing a prank, but they take the dog aboard the train. The town doctor says that it’s possible that Tom could have had an accident on his motorcycle, and when they get to town, the town doctor, some of the other men, and Ruth set out to see if the dog will lead them to where Tom is. Ruth needs to come because the dog behaves better for her than for the men.
When they find Tom, he really is hurt, having had a motorcycle accident. He is barely conscious and muttering, “It was J. Potter. He did it!” They don’t know what it means, although it sounds like he’s accusing Ruth’s great uncle of causing his accident. By the time they get Tom to safety, it is late, and it turns out that Ruth’s uncle visited the train station at the wrong time, before the train even arrived and not seeing Ruth, assumed that she wasn’t on the train and left. Because her uncle lives outside of town and it’s rather late, the station master, Mr. Curtis takes Ruth to stay the night at his house with his family. Mrs. Curtis is very nice, but Mercy is a young invalid. She doesn’t like other children because they stare at her because of her disability, and she can’t play the games other children play.
The next day, Helen Cameron, Tom Cameron’s twin sister, comes to the Curtis house to give Ruth a ride to her great uncle’s house. Ruth likes Helen, but Helen tells her that her great uncle is a good miller but has a reputation as a miser, and she’s surprised that he decided to take her in. That worries Ruth, but Helen assures her that there will be others in town who would be willing to have her if she can’t stand living with her great uncle. In fact, Helen’s father even told her that he would be interested in having Ruth come to stay with them because she would be a good companion for Helen. Tom and Helen’s mother died when they were babies, and Helen would appreciate having another girl in the house. It’s a generous offer, but first, Ruth needs to meet her great uncle and see what he’s like.
Great Uncle Jabez is very much like Helen described. He is a hard worker but an impatient, hard-hearted, and self-centered man who doesn’t do much of anything without analyzing what he can get out of it for himself. He makes it clear that if Ruth wants to stay with him, he’ll expect her to work and make herself useful to the household. There is only one other person who lives with Uncle Jabez, the housekeeper, who likes to be called Aunt Alvira, although she is no relation to either Jabez or Ruth. Aunt Alvira tells Ruth that her uncle is a good man for giving her the position of housekeeper when she had nowhere else to live and no family of her own. She is more warm and affectionate than Ruth’s great uncle, making Ruth feel more at home. Ruth sees that she can be helpful to Aunt Alvira by assisting her with household chores. Aunt Alvira is getting older and has aches and pains that cause her to often exclaim, “Oh, my back, and oh, my bones!” She appreciates having a strong young person to help her. Uncle Jabez becomes appreciative when he sees that Ruth knows how to do chores and make herself useful, and Aunt Alvira’s affection makes Ruth’s new home bearable for her.
One day, when Tom is feeling better, he and Helen come to see if Ruth wants to take a ride with them. Aunt Alvira says it’s okay for her to go, and while they’re out in the Camerons’ car, they witness the breaking of the mill’s dam. The young people realize that they need to warn others who are in danger. They drive around, shouting warnings for people to get out of the way, and they finally take refuge at the red mill, which is soon cut off like an island. The mill’s office is partially destroyed in the flood, but the mill itself is undamaged. Uncle Jabez makes it safely back to the mill, although he has to drive his mules hard to make it through the waters. Unfortunately, there are two major losses: Ruth’s trunk, which Jabez was bringing to the mill from the train station and was lost out the back of his cart in the water, and Uncle Jabez’s money box, which was in the mill office and contained his life’s savings, all of the cash he had in the world. Uncle Jabez hasn’t trusted banks since the last time he lost money when the town’s bank failed. Everyone thinks that the money box was swept away when the office was partly destroyed by the flood, but Uncle Jabez has other suspicions when he learns that Jasper Parloe, a disreputable man, was near the mill office around the time when it was destroyed.
The book is now public domain and available to read for free online in several formats through Project Gutenberg. There is also an audio book version on Internet Archive.
My Reaction
As one of the earlier Stratemeyer Syndicate books, there are elements of adventure and general fiction as well as mystery. In fact, there is more of these elements than there is of mystery. There are the disasters that Ruth and her friends must confront, the motorcycle accident and the flood caused by the breaking of the dam, but they don’t really seem to try to investigate any further into these for much of the book. They also don’t really try to investigate the disappearance of Uncle Jabez’s money box, thinking that it just washed away in the flood, even though Jasper Parloe suspiciously ran to where he knew it was and then ran away immediately after. I don’t think it’s even that much of a spoiler to tell you that Jasper Parloe did indeed take Uncle Jabez’s money box. The fact that he has a “secret” is right in the title of the book, there are no other suggested secrets about him, he was right on the scene to take it at the time it disappeared, and there are absolutely no other suspects other than the flood.
Ruth has legitimate complaints about her uncle. Insisting that Ruth help out around the house isn’t bad, but at first, he resists the idea of sending Ruth to school, asking basically, “What’s in it for me?” Uncle Jabez never does anything for anybody without seeing what’s in it for him. Even though Aunt Alvira credits Uncle Jabez with giving her a home, Jabez got a free servant out of it, so it’s not like he was really doing Alvira a favor as a Good Samaritan. In fact, in places where slavery and indentured servitude are illegal, most people would pay a live-in housekeeper a salary as well as providing them with a place to live as part of the job. Jabez isn’t even doing that. His “favor” gets him free services most people would pay for.
I don’t fault him too much with not trying to immediately get Ruth some new clothes after he lost her trunk in the flood. While he should replace the clothes as soon as possible, his money was missing, so he might not have had the funds. Still, he is not the least bit sympathetic to Ruth about her loss and even seems to take some pleasure in telling her that he lost her trunk, which is awful. Uncle Jabez does get better, though, especially after he gets his money back.
A fun, expected part of the story is the fondness that unexpectedly develops between Uncle Jabez and Mercy Curtis. From the beginning of the book, Mercy is bitter about her physical condition and the fact that she has to use a wheelchair. The book makes it clear that Mercy’s bitterness is poisoning her chances of making friends in her community. She thinks that other people are mocking her or looking down on her for her disability. A major part of that exists only in Mercy’s own mind because she herself is upset about being disabled, so she exaggerates what she thinks other people are thinking about her or saying about her behind her back, and she’s often wrong. One thing that she’s not wrong about is that people pity her, and even if they’re not being mocking of her, they are sometimes overly sweet or pitying in their tone. She takes that as mockery, although it’s really meant to be a kind of sympathy. Mercy ends up liking Ruth because Ruth doesn’t do that around her. Ruth feels pity for Mercy, both because of her physical problem and because of her bitter attitude that’s making her more unhappy, but she purposely doesn’t show it because she knows that would only annoy Mercy more. Instead, she just speaks calmly and nicely to Mercy about things that she’s experiencing and finds pleasant, and that draws Mercy out of her shell. When Ruth describes her life at the mill while visiting Mercy, Mercy admits that she’s often admired the red mill and the grounds around it from a distance, the first time she really admits to liking anything. Most of the time, Mercy has a sharp tongue and is full of criticism. However, she expresses an interest in seeing the red mill up close and meeting Uncle Jabez. Uncle Jabez fascinates Mercy because he is ugly. Because Mercy is physically imperfect, she is drawn to other people who are also physically imperfect, and the fact that Uncle Jabez is blunt and biting in his speech also fits well with Mercy’s personality. She knows that Uncle Jabez won’t talk to her with any of the pitying sweetness that she can’t stand. In return, Uncle Jabez is pleasantly surprised that Mercy honestly likes him for being the crotchety old coot he is and enjoys letting her come for a visit at the mill. The twins take her to the mill in their car, which is a treat for Mercy, and the visit with other people who accept her for who she is does her good.
Stories about invalids getting better through improving their attitude and outlook on life were a common trope in children’s literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Secret Garden was only published two years prior to this book. However, I was pleased that they chose to make it clear that Mercy has a genuine physical disability, not one that’s all in her head and vanishes as soon as she starts thinking pleasant thoughts. It makes the book more grounded in reality. Mercy did have a real problem that would be genuinely upsetting to have, and while making new friends and getting a new perspective on life did help her feel better, it takes real medical intervention to bring about improvement in her physical condition. Before the end of the book, the local doctor brings a specialist surgeon to see Mercy, and Mercy gets an operation that restores some of the use of her legs, giving her improvement that she can genuinely feel glad about. She doesn’t get completely better, which also is true to life with serious physical conditions. She still has to walk with crutches, so it’s not like they gave her an unrealistic, magical cure. However, Mercy accepts the marked improvement in her condition for the blessing it is. No longer being dependent on a wheelchair means that she can do more things than she was previous able to do, and in the next book in the series, she is even able to attend boarding school with Ruth and Helen.
The Rover Boys at School by Arthur M. Winfield (aka Edward Stratemeyer), 1899.
The three Rover boys, Richard, Thomas, and Samuel (called Dick, Tom, and Sam), live with their aunt and uncle in the country, but they learn that they are going to be sent to boarding school. The boys have been restless on the farm because they used to live in the city.
The boys’ father, Anderson Rover, is a mineral expert and made his fortune in mining. The family had lived in New York, so the boys are accustomed to city life. The boys’ mother died of a fever when they were young. After his wife’s death, the boys’ father traveled restlessly because of his grief, leaving the boys at boarding school in New York. Then, he had the notion to go to Africa and left the boys with their Uncle Randolph. The boys and their uncle haven’t heard from him since, and they worry that something has happened to him.
When the boys first arrived at the farm, they enjoyed the outdoor life of the country, but there isn’t much variety to the activities, and the boys start getting to trouble when they get bored. Their Uncle Randolph spends all of his time in studying scientific farming, and he can’t understand why the boys can’t take an interest in the subject or at least give him some peace and quiet for his work. The boys aren’t too impressed because, so far, their uncle doesn’t seem too successful at it. Richard (Dick) is the oldest of the three boys and is often quiet and studious, so he gets along better with Uncle Randolph than the others. He is 16 at the beginning of the series. Thomas (Tom) is fun-loving, likes to play pranks, and is 15 years old. His pranks are part of the reason why the boys are driving their uncle and aunt and their cook crazy. Samuel (Sam) is 14 years old and athletic.
Uncle Randolph doesn’t know much about kids or young people, so boarding school seems like the ideal solution. The boys’ aunt and uncle think that the boys need some discipline. They do, but the boys are also looking forward to seeing something of the world and having some adventures, so the prospect of going to boarding school sounds exciting to them. They’ve been to boarding school before, but they think it would be exciting to go to a military academy.
Before the boys leave the farm, Dick is attacked by a tramp, who steals his watch and pocketbook (wallet). The boys chase him and get the wallet back, but Tom almost drowns and Sam is almost swept over a waterfall while they try to pursue the tramp, who escapes in a boat with the watch. The boys are sad about the loss of the watch, which belonged to their father.
Tom gets a letter from his friend, Larry Colby, to say that he’s going to be attending the Putnam Hall Military Academy soon, and Larry’s father has recommended the school to the boys’ uncle. Uncle Randolph says that he’s decided to take the suggestion. The boys think it sounds exciting, and they’re glad that they’ll be going to school with someone they know. Uncle Randolph says that the headmaster of the school, Captain Victor Putnam, is a former military man who has a reputation for being kind to his students but strict on discipline, so it sounds like what the boys need.
Later in the story, they explain that Captain Putnam is a graduate of West Point and that he used to serve under Major General Custer, helping to put down Indian uprisings (Native American) until he was injured in a fall from his horse. For this book’s original audience of boys living in the late 19th century, this probably would have sounded exciting and noble, but not to people from the early 21st century. However Captain Putnam would have looked at it, quelling Native American uprisings would be essentially admitting to being part of their oppression because they weren’t uprising for nothing, and that fall from his horse is probably the only reason why he would even still be alive at the time of this story, given what eventually happened to Major General Custer. Because Custer had been a Civil War hero, people were shocked and saddened by his sudden and violent death. As with many people who die young, they romanticized his past and exaggerated his story, turning him into a legend for young people to live up to. Eventually, the romanticism wore off, and the reality stayed (he was the bottom of his class at West Point, not a student parents would really want their kids to emulate, and there were darker sides to his life and personality than most people in the 1800s would have known and which wouldn’t be appropriate talk for children), which is why his modern legacy isn’t as great as people a hundred years or more ago would have thought. Captain Putnam doesn’t look as exciting and heroic as advertised by association, but it’s enough to know that the Rover boys would have thought that it sounded impressive because of what their elders would have told them and so would their earliest readers, for similar reasons.
Before the boys leave for school on the train, Tom plays one last trick on the unpleasant station master by throwing a firecracker into some trash that the station master was burning, setting the mood for the boys’ eventual arrival at school.
After the train ride, the boy have to continue part way by boat. On the boat, they meet three pretty girls (how fortuitous) and a bully who also goes to their new school, Dan Baxter. The bully is harassing the girls by continuing to try to talk to them when they want him to leave them alone. Dan doesn’t say anything shocking to the girls, it’s more that he’s off-putting because he’s rather pushy and full of himself and can’t read a room to see that he’s making the girls uncomfortable because of the way he talks. It’s awkward. The Rover boys step in and try to get Dan to leave the girls alone, making an enemy of Dan. The girls (Dora Stanhope and her two cousins, Grace and Nellie Laning, who belong to prosperous farming families in the area) are grateful for the intervention and think that the Rover boys are better behaved than Dan is. The boys talk to the girls about their new school and learn that they don’t live far from the school, although they don’t mix with the students there much because the students at Putnam Hall don’t leave the campus very often. The boys hope that they’ll have the chance to see the girls again while they’re at Putnam Hall. (You know they will.)
Tom’s Putnam Hall experience starts off with a bang … literally. As the boys arrive at the school, Tom decides to give the other students a “salute” by scaring them with another of his firecrackers. That’s when Tom gets his first taste of military discipline from the Head Assistant Josiah Crabtree, the second in command at the school and the strictest disciplinarian in the place. Most of the school would have given the prank a pass, especially from a new boy, but Josiah Crabtree takes exception to Tom’s attitude and doesn’t accept his excuse that he doesn’t need to answer to Crabtree because he has only just arrived at the school, isn’t an official student yet, and shouldn’t be subject to the school’s rules. (Tom may have thought that military school would be exciting, but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t have the first clue what military discipline is about.) Crabtree marches Tom off and locks him in the guard room to wait for Captain Putnam to return to the school and administer his discipline. This is actually in Tom’s favor because Captain Putnam understands that his students are still boys, and therefore, he isn’t as strict with them as he would be full adult soldiers.
Josiah Crabtree’s ultra-strictness has caused him to be not well-liked by other students at the school. When he and Tom discuss Tom’s prank while waiting for Captain Putnam, Tom continues to argue the point that he is not yet a student at the school and that Crabtree has no right to lock him up like he has. Tom tells him that he wants to be released to stay at the hotel in town so he can contact his guardian because he may not wish to join this school after all, threatening to tell his uncle of his mistreatment. Crabtree is correct that setting off a fire cracker to scare people isn’t the best way to start off on the right foot with the faculty (I wouldn’t have liked it if someone did it to me, and this is a school where people learn to fire real guns, so you can’t have people who treat firearms and explosives like toys), but Tom’s point that immediate imprisonment before he’s even really joined the school and been notified of the school’s rules is a valid criticism, and he is not so committed to the school at this point that he can’t leave if he wants to. If Tom makes false imprisonment a public issue, it would damage the reputation of the school. That threat is worrying to Crabtree, who knows that he has already rubbed others the wrong way and made a few enemies of his own.
Tom runs away from Crabtree and hides in the forest outside the school. He plans to walk into town, but along the way, he spots a campfire. He listens in on the conversation of the men sitting by the campfire. He discovers that one of them is the tramp who stole their father’s watch before, and he listens to the men discussing some clandestine “mining deal.” When they catch Tom spying on them, Tom confronts the man called Buddy about stealing his father’s watch. Buddy and his friend deny it, and Tom fights with them before running away and getting help at the Laning farm, where he meets Grace and Nellie again and the family gives him a room for the night. When he explains his story to the family, he learns that Josiah Crabtree has been courting Dora Stanhope’s widowed mother because she owns a sizeable farm and has money from her first marriage.
In the morning, Tom returns to the school and makes his case to Captain Putnam, arguing as he did the night before that he had not yet officially joined the school before Josiah Crabtree imprisoned him and confiscated and searched his luggage. Captain Putnam makes it clear to Tom that certain things, like fire crackers, are forbidden at the school, and he will have to accept that if he’s serious about being a student there. Tom asks what the point is of him joining the school if he’s going to have marks against him before he’s even had a chance to properly start, and Captain Putnam says that if Tom still wants to join, he’s willing to let bygones be bygones and let him start school with a clean slate. Captain Putnam sees Tom as intelligent and spirited even though he’s undisciplined, and is willing to give him a chance. Tom accepts and joins the school, although Crabtree is still annoyed at Tom getting away with his prank and running away the previous night. When Tom rejoins his brothers, he tells them about seeing the thief who stole the watch, and they discuss how awful it would be for Dora if the martinet Crabtree became her stepfather.
Because The Rover Boys is an early Stratemeyer Syndicate series, there is more adventure and the general friendships and rivalries of life at a boarding school than there is mystery. The boys and their friends get used to the routines, rules, and drills of military school, getting into fights with the bullies, playing sports, and pulling stunts with their friends. However, there are villains in the story with secrets for the boys to learn. Josiah Crabtree hasn’t been honest with Dora Stanhope’s mother, trying to use pressure to get her to marry him so he can use her money and property for his purposes … including money and property entailed for Dora under her late father’s will. Crabtree claims to have money of his own, bur shows no evidence of it. Although, who has been giving the bully, Dan Baxter, large sums of money and for what purpose? What about the watch thief and his friend? Why do they keep hanging around?
By the end of the book … not too much is resolved, compelling readers to continue on to the next book in the series to find out what happens.
This book and others in the series are now public domain and are easily available online in various formats through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (including audiobook).
My Reaction
I never read any of this series of books when I was a kid, but having grown up with other Stratemeyer Syndicate books, like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins, I was curious about this first series produced by the Syndicate. I picked several of the books to get a feel for the series, and I had several reactions. First, the Rover Boys, like other early Stratemeyer Syndicate series, is almost but not quite a mystery series. It has some elements of suspense, but the little mysteries and secrets of the villains in the story come secondary to physical adventures and the drama of boarding school life for much of the book. In fact, the action kind of breaks for stories about football and baseball games the boys play at school, which don’t really have anything to do with the villains’ plots and are just part of school life. Although, the bully Dan Baxter loses favor with other boys at school when they discover that he actually placed a bet against the school’s own football team before a game, which seems pretty disloyal. I also suspected at first that at least some of the villains’ threads would be connected, but really, they have very little to do with each other, which was disappointing.
Stratemeyer Syndicate books have a pattern of ending chapters on cliffhangers in order to keep kids reading to find out what happens, which begins to show in this book, and often, the mystery/suspense elements in early stories help to set up these cliffhangers while the plot is more about the characters’ lives. Personally, I prefer stories that are more definitely mysteries, where the characters are making active efforts to solve problems and discover the villains’ secrets instead of just randomly stumbling on information. This particular story kind of annoyed me because the entire book ends on a cliffhanger. In fact, the only problem/mystery that gets resolved in the story is that Dick eventually gets his watch back. The other villains are still hanging around. At the end of the book, Crabtree is still hanging around, in spite of multiple interventions, trying to get Dora’ mother to marry him and turn over Dora’s inheritance from her father. The bully, Dan Baxter, left the school, but is apparently hanging around with Crabtree. It also turns out that Baxter’s father is secretly an old enemy of the Rover boys’ father and thinks that Anderson Rover cheated him out a mine years ago and still has the paperwork to prove it, possibly carrying it with him to Africa, for some reason. The Rover boys’ father is also still presumably lost somewhere in Africa, doing who-knows-what there. All of these problems are left hanging, apparently to be resolved in later books with other problems probably being added along the way. The only thing that I felt really certain about at the end of the book is that Dick is probably going to marry Dora in the future because he is already trying to be her protector, and his brothers will probably marry her convenient cousins, Grace and Nellie, in some order.
Second, I was bracing myself throughout the story to watch for its use of racial language. One thing to watch with old Stratemeyer Syndicate books is racist language and attitudes. In the 1950s and 1960s, with the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the Syndicate revised and updated its different series. They changed and removed outdated language, including racial terms, and also updated references to culture and technology. The version of this particular book that I used for my review is the old public domain version. I already talked about Captain Putnam’s service with Major General Custer and how people at the time would have felt about that compared to modern people, but there is also a black man called Alexander who works at Putnam Hall. He doesn’t have a very big role in the story, but I wanted to talk about him because of the way the book describes him. The book describes him using the words “colored” and “Negro”, which are outdated now although acceptable for the time period (that’s why they’re part of the names of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909, and the United Negro College Fund, founded in 1944). However, during the Civil Rights Movement, people wanted to distance themselves from terms that were used during periods of high discrimination, so they began shifting to the use of “African American” as the specific term and “black” as the generic. This is the sort of language update that the Stratemeyer Syndicate books received in later reprintings.
Later in the book, one of the boys’ friends jokingly imitates a “Negro minstrel” in an old minstrel show (an entertainment people of this time would have been familiar with which included caricatured characters of black people), saying “That’s the conundrum, Brudder Bones. I’se gib it up, sah!” (“Brudder Bones” was a stock character in one of those shows, although I don’t know much about it because I’ve never seen a real minstrel show. I think there was a similar reference to the name “Bones” as a minstrel show character in the book Cheaper by the Dozen as well.) This is another cultural element that would be removed from later Stratemeyer Syndicate books and that also appeared in other older children’s books that were written prior to the Civil Rights Movement, including at least one of the Little House on the Prairie books. These references get a bad reaction in modern times because this type of caricature is a mean style of humor that probably wouldn’t have lasted very long against anybody who had the authority to complain about it at the height of its popularity. To put it another way, it’s the kind of humor where someone is definitely being laughed “at”, not “with,” and some even included songs with descriptions of horrifically violent things happening to black people masked as comedy. If you’ve never seen this kind of reference to minstrel shows before, you are not missing anything for having grown up without it. There’s nothing inherently funny in the friend’s little joke, and it wouldn’t mean anything to anybody who didn’t know what the reference referred to. It seems to be one of those things that only becomes amusing when someone recognizes the source of the reference, and as I said, I’m not even sure exactly who “Bones” was supposed to be, other than some kind of stock character. I vaguely know what the reference is from, but not enough to connect with it in the way the original audience might have, and anyone younger than I am probably wouldn’t recognize even that much. I don’t want to put undue emphasis on this line in the book because it was only one line, and the Rover boys weren’t really into it either because they were worried about a problem they had at the time that wasn’t really funny, but I thought that I should explain the background of this comment and point it out as another reason why the Stratemeyer Syndicate books needed revising.
When referring to their father, who is still missing in Africa, the boys also worry that maybe he was killed or taken prisoner by “savage” tribes. “Tribes” in many children’s books of this period are described as “savage.” The exact location their father was trying to reach is not specified, just somewhere in Africa where there is a jungle, although a later book in the series has more about it.
Some general old slang in this book really dates it, like the use of the word “fellows” instead of “guys” and the word “peach” for “tattle” or “tell on” someone. Even later Stratemeyer Syndicate series, like the Hardy Boys, use language that would sound dated to modern people, like the word “chums” for “friends.” These old slang terms were also changed and removed from later reprintings.
There were also some features of this story that took me by surprise. Pranks and stunts are regular features of boarding school stories, but I was surprised at some of the roughness of the boys at the school as well as some of the punishments. At one point, the boys realize that Crabtree has pushed Dora’s mother to marry him, and they’re on their way to town to get married immediately. The Rover boys tell their friends and get them to swarm the carriage, pretending that it’s part of a game they’re playing, trying to delay or disrupt their trip to town and their wedding plans. The boys cause an accident with the carriage that causes Mrs. Stanhope to get a broken arm and a cracked rib. They’re lucky nobody broke their neck. It’s a pretty violent way to interfere, even though they’re trying to save Mrs. Stanhope and Dora from Crabtree’s machinations.
One thing I did enjoy was the description of the game of Hare and Hounds (also called Paper Chase) that came right before the carriage scene. I’d never heard of the game before, but apparently, it’s been a popular game in British schools for centuries. Probably, the reason I’ve never seen it played is because the playgrounds and yards of the schools I attended wouldn’t have been large enough to make a really good game. One person plays the role of the “hare” and is given a head start, leaving a trail of bits of paper behind him as he goes. The other players are the “hounds”, and they try to find the hare by following the trail of paper bits, like they were hounds following a scent. The object of the game is for them to catch the hare before he reaches a designated finishing point. At a school where you can see pretty much the entire playground and everyone on it at once, there wouldn’t be any point in following a trail or any real challenge to the game, but it sounds like an interesting game to play if you can find a large enough space for it.
Mystery of the Empty House by Dorothy Sterling, 1960.
Patricia Harrison’s family has recently moved from their apartment in New York to a house in Haven. Her father used to live in Haven when he was a boy. His mother still lives in town, and he still knows some of the other people who live there. Patricia, called Pat, is still unpacking her belongings when a boy from across the street, Jim Gray, calls to invite her to play ball with him and some of his friends in the field behind her house because his mother used to know his father when they were kids. Pat isn’t very used to playing with boys because she went to an all-girls school when she was in New York, but she agrees to go play ball with the boys.
When she goes to meet the boys, some of the other boys, the Paine brothers, don’t want her to play with them. When Jim said they were meeting “Pat”, they assumed that “Pat” was another boy. Jim says he doesn’t care if Pat is a girl or not because they could really use another player. Pat thinks they’re rude, and since they don’t seem to want her, she starts to leave, but Jim stops her and persuades her to stay. Even though Pat is usually good at baseball at school, she finds herself making clumsy mistakes when she plays with the boys, probably because she feels uncomfortable with them. Finally, she hits a home run, which is great, but there’s a problem. She accidentally hit the ball into the window of an old, abandoned house nearby that looks haunted.
The boys are mad because it’s the only baseball they have. Pat says they could just go get the ball, but the boys say they can’t. When she asks them if they’re scared, they say that’s not the problem; they’ve just promised that they won’t go near the old house. Pat says that, since she didn’t promise, she can just go get the ball, but Jim stops her from going into the house. He tells her that they can just buy a new ball. When Pat asks him why he doesn’t want her to go in, Jim says that it’s a secret having to do with the Paines. Pat says that she’s sick of the Paines and insists on going into the old house.
The old house is dark and spooky. When she climbs in through the window, Pat is startled when she runs into another person inside. At first, she can’t see the other person too clearly because it’s dark, but when she asks the girl who she is, the girl tells her that she’s Patricia Harrison. Pat is shocked and tells her that she can’t be Patricia Harrison because that’s her name. The girl finally laughs and admits that her real name is Barbara Thomas. Barbara lives next door to Pat’s grandmother and decided to stop by and meet her. When she saw Pat playing with the boys, she decided to go explore the old house instead.
Barbara is the one who explains the history of the house and the Paines’ attitude to Pat. The Paine family used to live in the old house. It’s the oldest house in town, dating back to the Colonial era. Nat Paine, the oldest of the Paine boys, was always proud of his family’s old home and used to brag about how George Washington and Lafayette visited the house during the Revolutionary War. It was even occupied by British soldiers at one time. Unfortunately, the father of the Paine boys was killed during the Korean War several years earlier (dating this story to the late 1950s or 1960, the year it was published). Since then, the family has fallen on hard times, and they’ve been unable to pay the taxes on the house. Now, because of the unpaid taxes, the town council is threatening to sell the old house to pay the unpaid taxes. The Paines have been forced to move out of the house and into a much smaller place, and Nat is very upset about it. Plus, he’s been going through this phase where he’s decided that he hates girls because he’s just getting into middle school, where all the boys either start developing crushes or decide that they hate girls. His younger brothers are being pests because they’re following his lead.
Barbara says that her father felt bad about what happened to the family and tried to convince other people in town to help the Paines pay the taxes on the old place. They could have helped, but they’ve made it plain that they just don’t want to. As Barbara’s father put it, “people in Haven are a bunch of rock-ribbed, rugged individualists who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” (I have strong feelings about that, and I’ll explain them in the reaction section.) Barbara reveals right away that the secret Jim is keeping for the Paine brothers is that Nat made his brothers take a vow with him that they wouldn’t enter that house again “until it was rightfully theirs.” Barbara says that Nat’s sense of pride talking, and “You know how boys are.” She thinks Nat’s being overly dramatic, although she sympathizes with the family’s plight. When Pat suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be in the house, either, Barbara says that she comes there all the time to explore. Barbara thinks the old house is fascinating and that there might be a secret passage somewhere. She invites Pat to help her look for it sometime.
At dinner that night, Pat finds out that her parents already know about the death of the boys’ father and the trouble that the family is having over their old house. Pat’s mother says that the old house is a good example of the saltbox style of house that was popular in Colonial New England. (I remember my old high school history teacher explaining how the slope of the roof was meant to help snow slide off during the winter, but the uneven slope also allows more living space to be added onto an existing house.) However, Pat’s mother says that there probably aren’t any secret passages in the house because houses from that time were built pretty simply and didn’t even have closets or bathrooms. She doesn’t think that there’s any place in the old house to conceal a secret passage.
Now that Pat knows the issues with the Paine family, she begins to feel better about them, and they start being nicer to her. As Pat begins settling in, she becomes better friends with Barbara and is happy that she has another girl as a friend. They ride their bikes downtown together, and Barbara sleeps over at Pat’s house. As the girls are getting ready for bed, Pat looks out the window and sees a light in the old Paine house when no one is supposed to be there. Barbara says that whoever’s in the house is probably looking for the secret passage and the treasure. When Pat asks what she means by “treasure”, Barbara says that there’s a rumor that there’s treasure hidden in the house from Revolutionary times. The family used to be rich, but after the American Revolution, when the children of the family returned to the house after their parents were killed, the family fortune had vanished. People think that the ancestors of the Paines hid their fortune somewhere during the war and that it’s still waiting to be found. (I already had some misgivings about the people of Haven and their intentions in kicking the Paines out of their house, and now, suddenly, my suspicions are even worse.)
Barbara says that they can’t just let this mystery sneak steal what should rightfully belong to the Paines and ruin the only chance they have left of regaining their house. The girls sneak over to the house to spy on the intruder, and they end up frightening him away. The girls tell the boys about what they witnessed the next day, and they persuade the Paine brothers to come into the house with them in spite of their “vow” to look around and see what the intruder was searching for. As they inspect the kitchen fireplace, where the man was searching, and look at the flashlight he dropped, the man shows up again. It turns out that he’s a college student doing research on the Paine family.
Back in Revolutionary times, the family that lived in the house was the Woodruff family. (A Paine ancestor married into the Woodruff family, changing the family name, but the Woodruffs are also ancestors of the current Paines. It’s the same family.) The college student, Robert Popham, found some old papers that indicate that the head of the Woodruff family, the first Nathaniel Woodruff, was a Tory. Nat, who was named for this ancestor (full name Nathaniel Woodruff Paine IV), angrily denies it, saying that his family was known to associate with George Washington and Lafayette, hosting them at their house. Robert explains more about the papers he found, but he also says that the last letter Nathaniel Woodruff wrote to his wife before he was killed indicates that he feared for his life and left something hidden in an old post box to pass on to his young son. However, as Nat points out, the date on this final letter was shortly after Nathaniel Woodruff’s wife was murdered by unknown assailants. (She was found scalped, so people blamed her death on American Indians, but it’s also possible that she was killed by someone else who just wanted to make it look that way to cover up the real reason for her murder.) Nathaniel Woodruff didn’t know his wife was already dead, and since she never got the letter and he was also killed soon after, the box is probably still hidden somewhere. Robert thinks that what Nathaniel hid was proof that he was actually a spy for the Patriots and that he feared for his life because he suspected that the British knew he was a spy. He says that he wants to find this hidden box and the information it holds because it would make a fantastic historical research paper.
The kids are completely on board with the search for the hidden box, both because the Paines want to preserve the reputation of their ancestors and because there may be valuables hidden in the box that will help the Paines pay their taxes and keep their home. However, they only have until August 15, the date that the town council has set for selling the Paine house. They only have until the end of summer to figure it out!
To begin with, I didn’t like the people of Haven right from Barbara’s description of them as “rugged individuals who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” It is pretty cold to turn out a war widow who is working as an underpaid nurse in the community and her children after their father was killed serving his country. I completely agreed with Barbara’s father’s assessment of the townspeople’s levels of generosity from the first. I suppose at least some of the townspeople of Haven probably thought they were actually being kind, giving Mrs. Paine several years after her husband’s death to come up with the mounting tax money, while doing nothing to help her and not actually paying her enough to manage and letting her family sink deeper into the hole until there was no way for them to escape, but in realistic terms, that’s not really kind at all.
We don’t actually hear the townspeople express their own feelings because the children don’t talk to the adults about their search and discoveries until they’re sure of what they found. When Barbara explained how her father felt about the townspeople’s unwillingness to help the Paines, I was also a little suspicious of their motives, and when Barbara mentioned that there’s been a popular rumor about hidden treasure in the Paine household for years and everyone has heard of it, I got really suspicious. Basically, I started looking for thieves among the townspeople. I immediately suspected that the “rugged individuals”, or at least some influential ones in the community, wanted to steal some historical treasure from a veteran’s widow and orphans because people who would would kick the widow and orphans out of their home might as well be out to steal their legacy, too.
If that was part of their plan, they weren’t very good at it, and they never even show up in the story. Perhaps I’m judging them a bit harshly, although in a way, I’m a little disappointed because that kind of Machiavellian plot would have made the story much more exciting. From the way the story goes, the townspeople might just not believe that there’s any treasure to be found because that rumor has been going around for so long and nothing has come of it. Still, I was suspicious of them for a good part of the book because it looked like the author was setting them up to be suspicious.
I was also annoyed by the townspeople because I found them ineffectual and uncreative in their approach to a community problem. They miss opportunities, and worse, they deny opportunities to others because they’re apparently stuck in their “rugged individual” mindset and won’t even entertain ideas that might help themselves as well as others when people like Barbara Thomas’s father suggest them. I often think that high-and-mighty rugged individualistic attitude cuts out so many genuinely fun, creative, and amazing possibilities that can make a community rich in character as well as money. It’s maddening to a person who thrives on creativity and likes to consider possibilities.
When I started getting really irritated at the townspeople, I guessed that, before the end of the story, they would do something to redeem themselves that would simultaneously leave me unsatisfied. I figured that the point where the townspeople finally come together would probably result in something that I thought they should have been working on from the beginning, and then, they’d act like it was such an amazing idea that they’d never thought of before and I’d be really irritated with them all over again because I thought of something like it very early in the story. Actually, that’s not how the story goes, and it’s still irritating to me.
So, what would I want them to do in this situation? Basically, the community wants its tax money, and the family wants to keep their house with a living wage that can support them. Fine. So, I asked myself, why not make this historic house, which is known to be the oldest house in town, into a community project which would actually contribute to the common good of the community (I don’t think “common good” is a dirty word, although I’m aware that some “rugged individualists” think so) and provide the Paine family with an additional source of income? If the town council invested in fixing up the house, which is also known to contain some very interesting Colonial antiques as well as fascinating architectural details and a unique history, the house could be turned into either a museum or a period bed-and-breakfast to encourage local tourism. (Sleep where George Washington and Lafayette slept!) Since it does have original furnishings and actual bedrooms, it probably wouldn’t take a lot to make the conversion for either of those projects.
The town and its business owners would benefit from the tourism, giving them an actual monetary return on their investment, and the Paine family could stay on with the house as its caretakers, receiving additional wages from visitors. People couldn’t say that the Paines simply received a handout because they would be doing valuable community work to support the town’s image and industry. It would satisfy Nat Paine’s family pride because he could talk to tour groups on the weekends and during the summer about his family’s great legacy to the history of his town. The whole community could even expand on the idea to further attract visitors, setting up a sort of local living history center, where people can learn Colonial crafts and recipes (something like what the Townsends demo on their YouTube channel), and schools from neighboring towns and cities could book field trips. Local business owners could support it with a themed restaurant and shops selling Colonial-era replicas and memorabilia and books about the time period. The town could hold special celebrations a few times a year to draw in more visitors, like a big Fourth of July parade or a Colonial Christmas celebration (although I known not all of the American colonies actually celebrated Christmas) or a re-creation of old harvest parties (more historically accurate) with plays by the local theater group (if they don’t have one, they could form one) or dramatic readings from Washington Irving at the local library or a themed fair with people selling local artisan crafts. They wouldn’t have to do all of this at once, but they could start with the matter of the house and build up from there. It’s an idea that has the potential for future expansion. This story is even set pre-Bicentenniel, so imagine what the town could do if they already had everything up and running by July 4th, 1776! Doesn’t anybody plan ahead? That’s creative use of resources. That’s community action. That’s job creation. Even if it’s not as big as Plimoth Plantation (now called Plimoth Patuxet to better incorporate the Native Americans) or Colonial Williamsburg (which both already existed by the time this story was written and could have provided inspiration), it’s still a money-making industry that is inherently built into the town’s very nature and won’t disappear tomorrow because some outside business decides to move or close a job-providing factory or something. Even if they didn’t get national or international attention, they would probably still be a destination for people from around their state and neighboring ones, and there’s potential for continued development. The project just need to be supported and promoted by the community.
Unfortunately, that’s not what they do. My griping aside, I guess if the solution was really that simple and the townspeople were more thoughtful and pro-active, we would lose the source of tension and the obstacle that our heroes have to overcome. The August 15th deadline is what pressures the kids to hurry up and find the treasure, so as irritating as it is to me, I have to put up with it.
The treasure hunt part is a lot of fun, and I liked the children’s logical, methodical approach to their search. When the children eventually find the hidden box, the story isn’t over. There are coded messages in the box that they have to decode to learn the full truth about Nathaniel Woodruff. Part of the story explains how they figure out how to decode the substitution code and the book code that compose parts of the message. The story they learn about Nathaniel Woodruff is better than anything the Paines had originally thought.
So, did they save the old house and do anything cool, like start a unique museum? Yes, and no. Although they don’t find any jewels, gold, or traditional sort of treasure, the letters that they find in the box are worth quite a bit. They sell them to a wealthy local business owner, and he donates them to a local university library. (So, you know, the wealthy business owner who never makes an actual appearance in this story and who wouldn’t have helped a war widow and her orphans for their sake can buy their family legacy and present it as his magnanimous gift to the university. I can’t say that he’s terrible for doing this because it does help, but I still think my idea was better.) The Paine family has enough money to keep their house and fix it up. It’s a pretty good ending, but I still prefer my vision. The story points out that it’s not a matter of everyone living happily ever after because they’re all their imperfect selves and still have some problems, but one lesson that they all learned from this experience is how to create their own book code to use for passing notes in class. It’s not profound, but codes are fun.
#13 The Mystery of the Gingerbread House by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1997.
Sarah-Jane lives near a couple whose names are Jack and Jill. They live in an old Victorian gingerbread style house. They have been fixing up the old house, and Sarah-Jane has been acting as a messenger, carrying samples of wallpaper to them from her mother, who is a decorator.
Sarah-Jane brings her cousins to see the house, and Jill shows them an old photograph that she and her husband found of the children who used to live in the house a hundred years ago and a friend of theirs. When the kids first arrived at the house, they startled someone who was working in the parlor. However, Jack and Jill insist that it was not either of them. They look in the parlor and are surprised to see that someone has continued the work they were doing, removing some of the old wallpaper that needs to be replaced. Why would someone sneak into the house to continue their work?
Someone has learned an important secret about the house and something hidden inside, and they are trying to find it before Jack and Jill stumble across it in their renovation work.
The theme of this story is Proverbs 25:13, “A trustworthy messenger refreshes those who send him. He is like the coolness of snow in the summertime.”
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 